The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has disputed that it refused to enable disgruntled political parties to view election documents as directed by the Appeal Court.
Festus Okoye, INEC’s National Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, made the explanation on Arise TV on Sunday.
Okoye instructed attorneys representing the aggrieved parties to route their requests effectively so that “the concerns might be dealt with swiftly.”
He further stated that elections are not held at the national level by INEC, but rather at the state and local government levels.
The INEC Commissioner further noted that the commission will lead the parties to the right location where they will be able to obtain the materials they require.
“The commission would not willfully or flagrantly disregard the order of a duly constituted court of law, in this case, the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting at the Court of Appeal,” he stated.
“I believe that the parties participating in this election should send attorneys who understand the nature of the electoral process to obtain some of these records.
“If you are seeking to scan ballot papers used during the election, ballot papers are not in the INEC headquarters.
“Some of these ballot papers are still at our local government offices, so the process continues.”
“Since some of these ballot papers are still at our local government offices, the right location to scan them will be in our local government offices.”
Okoye stated that INEC is just resetting the BVAS to reflect the new election date.
He said that the BVAS will not reconfigure itself until all of its data has been transferred to the commission’s site.
Okoye ruled against the notion of INEC allowing anybody to observe the reconfiguration of the BVAS, claiming that the device includes sensitive information about other people’s biometrics.
